Gambo: Day 2 update

By Adam Green | June 26, 2009 at 4:05 amUPDATED: January 14, 2011 at 4:21 pm

It is 1 am in the morning in Rome and I just got done with an amazing day capped off by spending the last 6 hours with my cousin Alessia and her husband. I have some mixed emotions today because I live for the NBA draft and breaking all the stories, and not being back in Phoenix on the radio doing what I do definitely bothers me some. But I am so happy to have met some of my family in Italy today.

My cousin took us to a very nice Sicilian restaurant in Rome then we went for some Gelatto and walked the streets of Rome all night, stopping to see the Tevi Fountain, Castel Sant Angelo, Piazza Cavour, Pantheon, Campo Di Fiori and much more. I learned a lot about my family.

There are only 72 Gambadoros in the world – including the five of us. There are 35 in Messina, 7 in Catania, 6 in Rome (Alessia and her family), 6 in Milano, 4 in Rieti, 2 in Napoli and bunch of others scattered about in towns such as Lodi, Trieste, Pavia, Cosemza, Terni and Lecco. This is the first time that I have met any of my family members in Italy, so I can not express how important this was to me and how much it meant to spend the day with family. I will have some pictures of my cousin up when I get back. My other cousin, Francesco, called today and we are going to meet up in Venice on Monday; he lives in Milan. So that is how I spent my night here in Rome.

Here is what I did this morning and afternoon which I wrote earlier today– What an amazing day. Got a little sleep last night — about 5 hours but found myself up at 3:30 and not able to go back to sleep. It’s not easy getting on this clock. We had a driver waiting for us at 8 who took us to the Vatican where we met our guide (Paulo) and did an amazing four-hours walking the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican museums. Words really can’t describe it unless you have done this. Seeing the Sistine Chapel painted by Michaelangelo is something I will never forget. Having the guide was the key because he was able to explain to us everything we were seeing in great detail. It is absolutely breathtaking. I took a ton of pictures and will post some when I get back.

The statues, some thousands of years old, are remarkable. We went back to the hotel for a few hour nap after lunch. I still can’t find many English speaking people. We had lunch at a nice restaurant and nobody spoke English, fortunately the strong point of my speaking the language is communication on food, menus, drinks etc. Some of the fun things about the hotel are the flusher on the toilet bowl is up on the wall – not on the toilet itself, the hotel lobby is on floor 0, the television gets two English speaking channels CNN and BBC.

Big day tomorrow or later today in six hours as we tour the Colosseum, Piazza Venezia, The Capitol Square, Roman Forum and the Basilica of St. Paul outside the wall….That’s it for now…I’ll have some thoughts on the Suns draft and trade on my next post…CIAO Phoenix.